NEW RELEASES
Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 2: The Gathering Stars by Eiji Yoshikawa
The Phantom of the Underground Tank by Juza Unno
THE WARLORDS RISE AGAINST THE TYRANT
The coalition has gathered. From every corner of the dying Han empire, eighteen warlords have pledged their armies to a single cause: the destruction of Dong Zhuo, the tyrant who seized the capital, deposed the Emperor, and now rules from Luoyang with the peerless warrior Lü Bu at his side. Among them is Liu Bei, still a nobody with no land and no title, whose sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei will write their names in legend before the campaign is over — Guan Yu with a single cup of wine cooling on the table while he rides out to take a general’s head, and all three brothers together against Lü Bu at the gates of Hulao Pass, in the most famous duel in Chinese literature.
But coalitions built on ambition shatter on success. When Dong Zhuo burns Luoyang to the ground and flees west with the Emperor, the alliance collapses into suspicion and betrayal. Sun Jian, the Tiger of Jiangdong, pockets the Imperial Seal and marches south. Cao Cao, the only man with the clarity to pursue Dong Zhuo, is abandoned by his allies and nearly destroyed. And in the capital’s ashes, an aging minister named Wang Yun launches the most audacious conspiracy in the saga, a plot that hinges on the legendary beauty of a single woman who will set father against adopted son and bring the tyrant down from within.
The Gathering Stars is the second of ten volumes in Castalia House’s complete English translation of Yoshikawa Eiji’s Sangokushi. Over the next two weeks, all ten volumes will be released. Now available on Amazon.
Excerpt
The express riders bearing news of the defeat threw Luoyang into turmoil. Li Su, thunderstruck, rushed to inform the Chancellor. Dong Zhuo himself had gone white.
“How badly did our men break?”
“They have fled back behind Si Pass.”
“Order them to hold the pass. No one leaves.”
“I have already given that command, pending the arrival of reinforcements.”
“How could a warrior of Hua Xiong’s caliber be killed so easily?”
“Whatever his courage, Yuan Shao commands real loyalty and real strength across the provinces.”
“Yuan Shao’s uncle, Yuan Wei. He is still in the capital, is he not?”
“He holds the office of Grand Tutor.”
“This is intolerable. If he were to raise insurrection from within, Luoyang would fall into chaos overnight.”
“I have been concerned about the same thing.”
“A dangerous man, and we have let him sit here all this time. Remove him at once.”
Over a thousand cavalry from the Chancellor’s guard were dispatched immediately to the residence of Grand Tutor Yuan Wei.
They set fire to it from the front and the rear. Every man and woman who fled the burning house, servants and warriors alike, was cut down. Yuan Wei himself did not escape.
That same day, two hundred thousand troops marched from Luoyang.
One force, fifty thousand strong under Generals Li Jue and Guo Si, was sent to reinforce Si Pass.
The other force numbered one hundred and fifty thousand, and Dong Zhuo himself led it to fortify Hulao Pass.
Among the retainers guarding the Chancellor rode Li Ru and Lü Bu at the head of a company that included Zhang Ji, Fan Chou, and other formidable men. Hulao Pass lay fifty-odd li south of Luoyang, and it was said that a hundred thousand men holding its natural ramparts could deny passage to any army under heaven.
Dong Zhuo established his headquarters there and summoned Lü Bu, the strong right arm of his forces.
“You will take the field beyond the pass.”
He gave him thirty thousand picked troops.
With Dong Zhuo himself holding the pass with a hundred and twenty thousand men, and thirty thousand elite troops deployed as a vanguard under the warrior they called a match for ten thousand, the position was a fortress of iron and stone in more than name alone.
Cut off from the ten provinces’ supply routes, the coalition lords found their communications with their home territories threatened, and the first signs of unrest rippled through the allied camp.
“This has become grave. We must settle on a strategy before the men lose heart.”
Yuan Shao spoke quietly to Cao Cao.
Cao Cao agreed, and they convened a war council at once to make their course clear.
The enemy had split into two forces to advance south, and so the coalition divided its own strength in answer. One contingent remained at Si Pass. The rest, the combined armies of eight lords, marched on Hulao Pass. These eight were Wang Kuang, Bao Xin, Qiao Mao, Yuan Yi, Kong Rong, Zhang Yang, Tao Qian, and Gongsun Zan.
Cao Cao held himself in reserve as a mobile force, ready to reinforce any point of the line that wavered.
“So. They have come.” Lü Bu, astride the famous Red Hare, surveyed the approaching enemy from his forward position beyond Hulao Pass with perfect composure.
Lü Bu, in his panoply that day.
Over a crimson brocade war-coat blazoned with a hundred flowers he wore linked-ring armor. His hair was bound in triple prongs beneath a purple-gold crown. A lion-skin belt held his bow and arrows at his waist. In his hands he gripped the great painted-haft halberd, and he sat astride Red Hare so that even that great horse looked small beneath him. His presence overwhelmed the coalition’s army, and every man who saw him could only stare.
“So that is Lü Bu.”
THE FATHER OF JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION
In 1940, a Japanese electrical engineer who wrote science fiction imagined the year 1950: an American cargo ship fighting through an Antarctic blizzard, a secret military installation buried beneath the ice, and a fleet of underground tanks that could bore through solid rock. He called it The Phantom of the Underground Tank, and it was the kind of book that made Japanese boys dream about the future the way Heinlein made American boys dream about the stars.
When the cargo ship Ark runs aground on an uncharted Antarctic shore, young Okishima and his American friend Pete discover something impossible beneath the ice: a vast subterranean fortress stocked with machines unlike anything in any nation’s arsenal. Captured by a rogue commander with plans that could reshape the balance of power across the Pacific, the two boys must escape a prison buried a thousand meters underground, survive the frozen wasteland above, and find a way to warn the outside world before the phantom fleet launches.
Written for young readers by the founding father of Japanese science fiction, The Phantom of the Underground Tank is a lost classic of pre-war adventure SF, a book that belongs on the shelf between Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo. An original Castalia House translation. Now available on Amazon.
Excerpt
The Ark was burning every drop of heavy oil her engines could take, straining at full power to push through the blizzard toward the pole. It was almost entirely wasted effort. The ship would start to make headway, only to be shoved back again, unable to hold her gains.
Worse, the danger was growing by the minute. They were charging blind into the storm, like a man with no eyes running along a cliff’s edge without a cane.
The captain and his first officer stood on the bridge, coat collars turned up, staring into the spray. Neither face showed any color of life.
“Captain. It’s no good, is it.”
“No. I know it’s no good.”
“This is madness. We can make our excuses to Rear Admiral Lind afterward. At least let us heave to until the blizzard passes.”
“It’s too late for that. Rear Admiral Lind has placed a great wager. A great wager for the Greater American Federation. We have no choice but to join him in it. Because—”
“Captain! Iceberg!”
“Damn. Radio Rear Admiral Lind—”
Before the captain could finish his anguished cry, a mountain of ice loomed suddenly off the bow. In the same instant a tremendous crash sent every man on deck sprawling.
The alarm shrieked.
The Ark drove up onto the iceberg with a grinding, splintering roar.
White steam erupted from the hull in billowing clouds. The engines must have ruptured.
“All hands on deck!”
The crew poured out onto the blizzard-swept deck. The wind hit like a wall of ice. Four or five men slipped on the spot and went over the side into the sea.
The alarm reached the quarters of the Nameless Strike Force just as fast.
The men were stunned.
“We’ve hit an iceberg! All hands on deck!”
An iceberg was shock enough. That they’d struck one and the ship was sinking was beyond belief.
The men had noticed it getting colder and figured the ship had turned north off Newfoundland, heading up toward Canada.
“What, we’re in the Bering Strait already?”
Not the Bering Strait. The exact opposite direction. They were near the Antarctic.
Lieutenant Carlton, commander of the Nameless Strike Force, had slammed his head into an iron door in the collision and was badly hurt. But he was a soldier through and through. He tore a curtain into strips, bound his head tight, and turned to his men.
“Everyone stay calm. We’re near the Antarctic, but Rear Admiral Lind will send a rescue party before long.”
“The Antarctic?”
“That’s right. Too late to keep it quiet now. The Antarctic was our destination all along. We were to come under Rear Admiral Lind’s command and receive our operational orders from him. After that, we were supposed to—”
“Hey! Boats are over here! Nameless Strike Force, move it!”
The lieutenant’s words were cut short.
The men scrambled across the tilting deck, each one fighting to reach the boats first.
“Stay calm! A rescue party will come! Count on it!”
The blizzard swallowed the lieutenant’s voice almost as fast as he could shout.
Then something worse happened.
An explosion ripped through the ship from below. Cold seawater had flooded into the boilers.
The Ark lurched with each blast, listing further every time.
Private First Class Pete and Sergeant Pye were the last ones out. They’d started to leave, realized it was a blizzard outside, and doubled straight back for their cold-weather gear. Training had paid off when it counted.
“Quite a show, isn’t it, Sergeant.”
“What? You’re cool as a damn cucumber. We could die out here, you know.”
“You only die once. Might as well enjoy the view while it lasts.”
“Kid, talking to you makes me want to put on a pot of coffee.”
Sergeant Pye, for his part, wasn’t exactly panicking either.
To support Castalia House’s historic translation efforts and receive a new translated ebook every week, support the Alexandria project, and get future access to Castalia Unlimited, become a paid subscriber to this substack. And to receive a deluxe leatherbound book every three months, subscribe to Castalia Library.